It is remarkable and worth your observation, to behold and hear the strange sights and confused noises in the fair. Here a knave in a Fool’s coat, with a trumpet sounding, or on a drum beating, invites you and would fain persuade you to see his puppets; there a Rogue like a Wild Woodman, or in an antick shape like an incubus, desires your company to view his motion; on the other side Hocus Pocus with three yards of tape or ribbon in ’s hand, showing the art of Legerdemain to the admiration and astonishment of a company of cockoloaches. Amongst these you shall see a gray Goose-cap (as wise as the rest) with a What de ye lack? in his mouth, standing on his booth shaking a rattle, or scraping on a fiddle, with which children are so taken, that they presently cry out for these fopperies; And all these together make such a distracted noise, that you would think Babel were not comparable to it. Here there are also your gamesters in action; some turning of a whimsey, others throwing for pewter, who can quickly dissolve a round shilling into a three halfpenny saucer.
Long Lane at this time looks very fair, and puts out her best clothes with the wrong side outwards, so turned for their better turning off; and Cloth Fair is now in great request: well fare the alehouses therein; yet better may a man fare (but at a dearer rate) in the Pig market, alias Pasty nook or Pie Corner, where pigs are all hours of the day on the stalls piping hot, and would cry (if they could speak) Come eat me; but they are ... dear and the reckonings for them are ... saucy, &c. &c.
It is clear that the glory of the fair is departing—Royal Proclamations notwithstanding.
Political Pamphlets.—1647. It seems to have become the fashion to designate some of the many political pamphlets of this period “Bartholomew Fairings.” One such work appeared this year entitled: “General Massey’s Bartholomew Fayrings to Colonel Poyntz.” This was ascribed to the famous John Lilburne. It was answered in another pamphlet: “Reformados Righted, being an Answer to a paltry piece of Poetry entitled, &c.” There is nothing in either of these throwing any light upon the fair. The same was not quite the case with a quarto pamphlet of the following year: “An Agitator Anatomised.” Here was reference to “a large and beautiful Camel from Grand Cairo in Egypt.” Mr. Morley thinks this may have been the beginning of “wild-beast shows” in the fair.
This year the Act was passed against “Stage plays.” It seemed destined to have an influence on the fair.
1648. Evelyn in his “Diary,” under date 28th August this year, notices his coming to London from Say’s Court and seeing the “the celebrated follies of Bartholomew Fair.” The date here seems to indicate some change in the date of the fair.
The Commonwealth and the Fair.—1649. This was a year of political commotion. The troubles with the King had terminated on the block. There was issued in the form of a tract, a book-play entitled: “A Bartholomew Fairing, New, New, New; Sent from the raised siege before Dublin, as a preparatory Present to the Great Thanksgiving Day. To be communicated onely to Independents.” It was published without any printer’s name. Its contents throw some light upon the political events of the period; but these have no bearing upon the fair, present or future.
It seems indeed to have been anticipated that the advent of the Puritans into power in this the first year of the Commonwealth might have led to the suppression of the fair. The speech of Zealot-of-the-land Busy, while sitting in the stocks at the fair in 1614 (“Bartholomew Fair,” by Ben Jonson) seemed prophetically to hint at this. Mr. Morley gives the following instructive picture of the period:
The Puritans did not suppress Bartholomew Fair. There were indeed no dramas performed in it by living actors, but the state did not condescend, like Rabbi Busy, to engage in controversy with the puppets. It was for the Corporation of London, if it pleased, to exercise control, and there was a Lord Mayor, who, as we shall see, did make himself eminent for an attack upon the wooden Dagons of the Show. Against the fool in his motley none made war; Cromwell himself had in his private service four buffoons, and had he visited the fair, true hero as he was, might have been well disposed to mount a hobby-horse. Therefore the clown still jested, and the toyman thrust his baubles in the face of the Roundhead, while the Cavalier’s lady, with a constellation of black stars about her nose, a moon of ink on her chin, and a coach and horses—a very fashionable patch—on her forehead, laughed at the short hair under the broad-brimmed hat of the offended gentleman. Well might she laugh at the miserable scarecrow in plain cloak and jerkin, and in boots that fitted him: for he had no love locks and no peaked beard like the gallant at her side; he wore only a little pecked band instead of a laced collar, and as for his breeches—not only did they want ornament and width; but they even showed no elegant bit of shirt protruding over them! Across the Smithfield pavement, Cavaliers in boots two inches too long, and with laced tops wide enough to contain each of them a goose, straddled about; compelled to straddle in order that the long and jingling spur of one boot, hooked into the ruffle of the other, might not bring down the whole man into the gutter. Women I say might note such things, but the men were in earnest. The dainty Cavalier in the historical shirt, embroidered with the deeds of profane heroes, might glance from the speckled face of his companion towards the clean cheeks of the Puritan maid in the religious petticoat worked over with texts and scripture scenes; all had their vanities, their froth of weakness floating loose above the storm; all had an eye for the jest of the fair, but under it lay in a heaving mass the solemn earnest of the time. The fair brought together from almost all parts of England, men who had urgent thoughts to exchange, harmonies and conflicts now of principle and now of passion to express. The destiny of fatherland was hidden from all in a future black with doubt. Men brave and honest had their souls pledged in allegiance to an earthly king, over whom and against whom others as brave and as honest set up rights given to them by the King of kings.